Percival Everett’s ingenious novel James was indisputably one of the books of 2024: it was the winner of the National Book Award for fiction in the US and shortlisted for the Booker prize in the UK. The plot is a retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, except this time round the narrator is Jim, Huck’s enslaved sidekick. James cranks up the ever-swelling appreciation for the 68-year-old Everett: his 2021 book The Trees was also Booker-shortlisted and an earlier novel, Erasure, was adapted into the Oscar-winning 2023 film American Fiction. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the novelist Danzy Senna, and two children, and we caught up with him in his workshop, where he writes and also repairs guitars.
James is such a brilliant concept. Do you remember the moment when you came up with it?
Deciding to write a book, it never feels like a great idea. It’s always like knowingly entering a bad marriage. If you had any sense, you wouldn’t do it, but you know you’re going to do it. But my wife, who is smarter than I am, said: “This is a great idea.” She was behind the book from the beginning, but I still am not so sure about it.
